Information Technology (IT) companies (or departments) that manage their customers' (or organizations') computer systems are constantly challenged with the need to provide timely, secure, and cost-effective support. Remote support provides the means for IT professionals to remotely access and control customers' (or organizations') computer systems. This eliminates the need for these professionals to physically travel on-site to address a problem, thereby minimizing delay in response time.
Traditional remote support approaches possess a number of drawbacks. For example, an Application Service Provider (ASP) hosted approach (also known as Software as a Service, SaaS) requires customers to route all centrally stored or logged data communication through a 3rd party data center, thereby potentially introducing security risks. Also, a server software installation deployment model poses complicated, costly integration issues, particularly when implemented into a large IT infrastructure (e.g., corporate network).
Without the need for pre-installed clients on a system, a local push system can be used by the representatives of a support organization to transfer an application to a remote system attended or unattended and execute the application to establish a session connection back to the representative. Unfortunately, this functionality only provides reach to systems that are visible from within the network that the support representative's computer is connected to, thereby presenting challenges to administer or support systems beyond an enterprising network—especially as the enterprise network grows or spreads to multiple locations. It encompasses many aspects of configuring and maintaining the enterprise system, for example, to distribute a necessary application and create configurations as well as providing unattended support. However, as the enterprise grows and cross one or more untrusted domains, it is impractical for the service administrator to reach each computer. Namely, if no extra means are provided, the reach of the service (e.g., control of remote computers and applications) from the support representative's computer is confined to only those computers to which network traffic is routable; consequently, service capability is limited.
Based on the foregoing, there is a clear need for approaches that enable extension of visibility of service application over network, ease of deployment, while minimizing security risks.